I would like to start a thread with links to public accessible articles about canine behavior and training. You can pretty much get all the information from a well-written book on the subject, but this thread should give you a head start on the basics.

If you know any good articles or blog posts related to the subject, please feel free to share. I will compile and update the first post.

04/03/2012 Added Socialization links and free force-free dog training videos. the video link page has a very big compilation of videos on different topics. A must-see for anyone that has a dog in their life!

A neighbor who has a young doberman pincher didn't do any training with it early on. It is now something like 15 months old. They sent it to a 3 week boot camp (not even a training that they interacted and learned from) for training. It pulls on her during walks and it is become heavy enough as it grew that the woman can't really control it if it becomes excited during a walk (ie by passing a dog or person).

Just yesterday I was saddened to see they have started using a pronged collar. I think she could see the disapproval in my eye during our brief passing conversation and heard my doubt when I said did your trainer really recommend needing that?

Told my husband I will always now avoid her as much as I can when walking because I want no part of the dog getting a pronged collar correction for becoming distracted, especially since it has never seemed to be an aggressive excitement but a playful excitement.

She is a nice lady, but I don't know her well enough to preach to her my thoughts on this, so now I am saddened by the future of this dog and how a nice lady has gone down what I feel is a real bad path

.... sorry, had to share after reading the rant stirred my sadness over having seen that yesterday even though not Shiba related, because I so disagree with fear, physical punishment, dominance as a training method for any lazy dog owner who doesn't want to invest the time to learn how to use positive methods.

@redcattoo, I will say not everyone who uses prongs does it because of that reason. My rottweiler has excellent off leash recall, and is very well mannered. Yet I live in the city, and people are extremely fearful (or looking for a lawsuit). She wears her prong more for keeping them at ease than anything else. Living in a bad neighborhood, its also important that I have complete control over her when someone high on drugs does something stupid. It doesn't mean she isn't trained, but when a dog that powerful reacts, sometimes voice commands don't cut it. Especially with a breed that takes guarding very seriously.

Even at 10, when something rankles her, I can't stop her with a buckle collar (she is very good at getting out of collars, including martingales). I really think its unfair to make broad sweeping generalizations in these situations. I know of people with serious disabilities, that need a prong to stop their dog when say something like a cat passes by that excite most dogs, but is dangerous due to their physical limitations.

Though to be fair, her prong is not sharp or painful, I tried it on my own neck so I know it doesn't really hurt her. Rottweiler's and most mastiffs have enough loose skin that I highly doubt it even phases them. She still pulls me when she really wants to, but at least I know she won't do her favorite trick of slipping out of collars.

Ofcourse I don't think most dogs need it, I think it depends on their size, if you live in a city vs rural setting, and ofcourse any medical conditions the owner has.

@Inoushi, I know everyone makes their own decisions, but when I see an owner who has told me they have never taken their dog to training and then sends it away to a boot camp for training when they finally realize they don't know how to control it on walks in a very quiet community this saddens me. Training is an every day process for a dog owner that they must learn to engage in, only they are waiting for someone else to do it for them and this is never going to resolve any issues.

Then because they didn't bond and do early training, they have found once it became 80+ lbs that getting it not to pull excitedly on the leash just passing another person or dog across a quiet street is a problem, so now they feel they have to turn to a prong collar, that saddens me more.

Had I known this person had used a lot of training early on and wanted to be involved in training and learning positive training techniques maybe (and I say only maybe) my conclusion would be a little different, but I know they have not been active in training this dog and this becomes their solution due to probably misguidance in trusting the wrong trainer and delaying the training process.

I will do what I can to be nowhere near them when walking because with every playful pull of their dog towards me and Bear all I could see was those prongs digging deeper into the dogs neck as it expressed its desire to come across the street. We were stopped for 2 or 3 minutes talking from opposite sides of the quiet road before I just had to move on because I couldn't stand to see it anymore.

This is a puppy training blog written by a certified dog trainer and instructor, who recently got a Border Collie puppy she named Hops, with the intention of doing Agility with him down the road. The trainer is very experienced and has trained service dogs before. She is all about positive reinforcement based training and her blog should give you a glimpse of what an experienced trainer does with her own puppy. This is her first Border Collie. I have met two of her dogs - a Lab that she trains as her service dog and she also competes with him in Agility and Nosework. She also has a mixed-breed rescue boy, who does really well in Agility and Nosework.

I thought I would post another article I just came across today that I thought interesting. It has to do with positive training and the concept of what reward(s) are effective.

I know I have always believed it can depend on what motivates the dog, I know the study discussed is only a very small sample and I know the activities trained and variety of rewards was limited, even so I thought it an interesting article for thought.

I want to add a link to this discussion, it's on frustration behavior during training. Frustration isn't something I see talked about much, and knowing the signs of it can help us all improve our training techniques.

Learning is stressful as one learns something new. Some people think the dog should never experience any stress or frustration in the learning process, but it is almost impossible in real life.

I think what pet owners should pay attention to is undue stress. Also note that each dog handles and takes stress differently. Some get stressed and recover quickly while others get stressed and shut down if the stress is too much for them.

This is an ongoing learning process throughout the dog's life as we human work with our own dogs and what I find most interesting as I work with my own dogs to learn about their temperament, personalities etc while we train for different sports.

When I first watched the video, I pretty much knew the dog facing the camera would 'win', as it was able to back the other dog on its butt. However, I thought it was interesting how the dog that was sitting seemed to keep a pretty aggressive posture(head always up, growling, would have been nice to see its facial expression the whole time).

All the time while the dog facing the camera sort of kept its head down and seemed to be avoiding eye contact. It ended up with the food, after slowly moving forward and only giving the sitting dog a couple of quick, confident stares.

Of course, my interpretation is probably not on target. Will be interested to see what you all think, and will be interesting to see what Patricia says in her follow up, which I will be sure to post once she posts it on her blog.

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."

This, I think, is a must view for anybody considering adopting a mill dog. I was fascinated to see how high Socialization, Training, and Pet touch hold scored on both Most/Least effective lists.

The other thing that I learned from the video was that comforting a fearful dog does NOT reinforce the fear. I've thankfully never had many fear issues with my dogs, but had always heard the opposite. His example of the child on the plane makes very logical sense.

And I really loved his cracks on Cesar!!!

It's a long video, but I really hope everybody will take the time to watch.

Again, thanks Snf!

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."

So I'm quite sure we all love our dogs, but do they reciprocate? There have been times when I could swear my dogs have either loved me, or hated me! Are dogs capable of such emotions...at least toward humans?

This recent study is very interesting, yet the results are a bit disappointing. Maybe my Kobe doesn't 'love' me after all.